Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates and his wife are to give $220 million over five years to the non-profit biotech firm Aeras to develop vaccines to fight tuberculosis, a company statement said Thursday.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is donating the money to Aeras which from its bases in the United States and South Africa has developed six possible TB vaccines that are being tested across Africa, Asia, Europe and America.

“This infusion of funding must be seen as a global call to action in response to one of the world’s deadliest diseases,” said Jim Connolly, Aeras’s president and chief executive, expressing gratitude for the massive grant.